The National Audit Office report (NAO blames Crossrail delay on ‘unrealistic’ management, 4 May) advances us part way towards an understanding of why so many major projects, of all sorts, are “delayed” and “over budget”. Whenever a gap opens up between plan and performance, the overwhelming tendency is to blame the managers/workers who “failed” to meet the target. In fact, the problem is often with overoptimistic, unrealistic plans in the first place. Crossrail is just one of many examples.
The moral of the story also applies to major private sector corporations, which routinely set targets for the performance of all their staff, and even for their share prices.
Yet most commentators report bad results as a “failure to meet analysts’ expectations”. The broader lesson of the NAO report is that we should focus as much on bad planning as on bad performance, in public projects and private business alike.
Jack Winkler
London
• Join the debate – email guardian.letters@theguardian.com
• Read more Guardian letters – click here to visit gu.com/letters
• Do you have a photo you’d like to share with Guardian readers? Click here to upload it and we’ll publish the best submissions in the letters spread of our print edition
